By the end of MoP

Blizzard will lose how many subscriptions?

It's a safe bet they won't gain since they have consistently lost subs following the release of their last expansion. People will leave, we all know this and those of you still playing probably accept it/don't care. It was a good run.

---------- Post added 2012-09-24 at 03:45 PM ----------

Optimistic voting thus far. I will ask that only currently active account holders vote because they have a better sense of the conditions.

As some one that unsubbed back in jan 2011 I will not be voting.

Edit: For those of you wondering why there is a "0 people" option that was added by the moderator Darsithis for any voters that believe MoP will sustain the subscription base.

Also there is no "it will gain subs" option because the empirical data supports the notion that wow has consistently lost subs since mid wrath.

It's a safe bet they won't gain since they have consistently lost subs following the release of their last expansion. People will leave, we all know this and those of you still playing probably accept it/don't care. It was a good run.[COLOR="red"]

Is it possible that Cata sucked and people may come back for MOP and stay?

Tough to vote since we really have no idea. I'm wild guessing with my vote. Due to all the new content being released, I'm thinking that less people will leave due to "lack of content". However, the game is also aging, so there will be more "bored of game" sub losses.

I wonder how many people vote for the option they actually believe in instead of the option that supports how they personally feel about the game.

That's the same thing. I personally feel none. I've been through parts of the beta as have almost all of the mods and my entire 25 man raid team. Every single one loved it. They love it. They think it's amazing and it's just where WoW needed to go to stem the losses from Cata.

I read a post last night wondering why anyone cares about subscription numbers. I have some sympathy for that. Since I have no idea at all what the answer to the poll should be my hope is that whatever happens I will have a good time, concentrate on the game and think less about things like this.

I think it will lose some subscribers though. The MMO market points that direction so I voted for 500K-1000K. No real idea though and not too sure I actually care.

That's the same thing. I personally feel none. I've been through parts of the beta as have almost all of the mods and my entire 25 man raid team. Every single one loved it. They love it. They think it's amazing and it's just where WoW needed to go to stem the losses from Cata.

What? It's not remotely the same thing. You can love the game and still believe that it will suffer massive losses, or hate the game and still believe that subscriptions will remain stable. I'm questioning people's ability to seperate the two!

Obviously some losses are inevitable as some people will try it and move on to other things. Due to the age of the game (and the fact that, at this point, almost everyone who ever wanted to try WoW already has) I doubt there will every be enough new players again to balance it out. I think modest decline will be normal.

How much loss will really depend on the later patches.

If the game ends up like Cataclysm with weaker and briefer content patches, the losses might be more significant as even more established players get bored and apathetic and take off.

But if the game can keep up the quality and amount of content that we're getting in the expansion launch, I think it will slow sub losses dramatically. We saw big drop offs in Cataclysm because there really wasn't enough to do end-game and the game can no longer sustain itself on novelty alone, like it did in classic. I'd like to think Blizzard learned from Cataclysm and that we will be getting more content and larger raids.